A few years ago, we showed you the first photos of the Nembo 32, an inverted 3 cylinder engine destined for sport bike use. The intention was to build a couple of prototype bikes and test the engine and handling and work out the bugs, after which they would be ready to move on to an "on request" production model. Well, Daniele tells me, after 4 years of building and testing, they're at that point, the number 2 prototype is up for sale and they are ready to take orders for the Nembo 32, (3 cylinders, 2 liters). The two prototypes were 1814cc, all engines now will be a full 2 liters.

Nembo Motociclette inverted 3 cylinder motorcycle engine

The Nembo website is also up and running with many pages explaining Daniele's reasoning for the rather unique engine layout for a motorcycle, comparing it to earlier aero versions. The bike is not intended as a track weapon, but is more a naked sportbike, with large displacement and compact dimensions, giving the owner an agile ride and great torque without the necessity of running at high revs to get there.

Nembo 32 on track

The earlier comments here debated the reasoning and function of this inverted layout, but my take is that anyone with an idea like this and the desire and capability of carrying it out is a plus in this world of "new" engines with little to justify the label. This engine is a big step out of the box, by any measure.

The bike will be very expensive, plain and simple, so these will be an infrequent sight, but with proven prototypes and more on the way, perhaps we'll see the idea carried further. I wish Daniele and his company the very best, because out of the box thinkers and doers are good for all of us.

Comments

Still not sure if an inverted engine has any advantage over a “conventional” layout, but they do seem to have gotten a lot of engine in a fairly small space. Who cares what their motivation was? It’s outrageous, unique and has to run strong and sound fabulous. That’s reason enough.

How in the world do they keep the oil from over-accumulating on the cylinder heads? Think oil lubricates the crankshaft and then drips down onto the connecting rods and cylinder heads, how do they scavenge the oil up from that?

That doesn’t look like a big bike to me, and at 375 pounds dry, it doesn’t seem to be very heavy. 57 inch wheelbase means it’s a little longer than a Yamaha R1 which is 55.7 inches and equal to a Kawasaki Z1000.

The gas tank styling borders on obscene. I think this bike is ugly…but, then I thought that my Norton Interstate was ugly, too (had plans of turning it into a roadster). I bet a spin around the block would have me looking at this bike with pure lust, like every time I used to set eyes on my Norton (sob and sniffle).

Sorry guys but I really don’t get it. As an engineering exercise, ok interesting concept but otherwise it just looks plan weird. I can only guess, that with the crankshaft so high up, it would make for interesting cornering characteristics.
Like the sound of a two litre triple though but rotate it 180 degrees please

The center of mass location issue has come up before and seems to be rearing its head again. I’d like to take a shot at it.
The turning movement on a motorcycle requiring the most effort to optimize is an ‘s’ curve, fully rotated one direction then as quickly as possible rotate fully the other direction. The best example in my mind is the corkscrew at Laguna Seca. I know there are other issues, particularly the vertical, but getting rotated from full left to full right there is a challenge. Quite often I have observed that it appears the lower end, wheels and tires, of the bikes through the corner travel right to left just as much or more than the rider’s helmet travels left to right. This tells me that I don’t want my center of mass as near to the axles as possible. Somewhere near halfway from contact patch to top of helmet seems more appropriate and here’s why. If you imagine a side view of a bike and rider, take a cutout image of left and right and glue them together with a small dowel or skewer of sorts longitudinally through the tires extending ahead and behind. Now twist the dowel left and right and observe the effort required to rotate the bike/rider system. Now create another with the dowel/skewer moved to parallel with the first skewer and halfway between contact patch and top of helmet. It will be much easier to rotate this system left and right than the first. We do not want the whole system rotating about the edge of the system. This would require more effort/energy.
I believe this is what Erik Buell is aiming at with mass centralization not just attempting to get the center of gravity/center of mass as low as possible. And it might be the goal of swapping positions of the head and the crankcase.